Washington’s minimum wage to rise to $9.04 an hour beginning in January

Washington State’s minimum wage will rise thirty-seven cents an hour to $9.04 beginning in January, the Department of Labor & Industries announced today.

Initiative 688, which voters overwhelmingly passed in 1998, requires the Department of Labor & Industries to adjust the minimum wage annually to account for inflation. (I-688, which NPI’s Steve Zemke was involved with, remains one of the most popular initiatives in state history).

The 37-cent increase reflects a 4.258 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI­W) since August 2010.

The CPI-W, which is used in this calculation, is a measure of the average change in prices over time of goods and services purchased by urban wage earners and clerical workers. Goods and services are determined as those things people buy for day-to-day living such as food, clothing, shelter, and fuels, and services such as doctor visits.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ news release, over the last 12 months the prices of most categories of consumer goods rose. The largest cost increases occurred for fuels and the lowest cost increases were for education and communication services.

Oregon is also set to raise its minimum wage in 2012, to $8.80 an hour, as required by Measure 25, passed by voters in 2002. (Measure 25 is Oregon’s equivalent of Initiative 688). Since the mid-2000s, Washington and Oregon have consistently maintained the highest minimum wages in the country.

Economists regard the minimum wage as one of the best examples of a price floor – a legal minimum price imposed on a market by government.

Although price floors (and price ceilings) do not always make sense, the minimum wage does because it prevents wage abuse. We, as a society, have an interest in preventing private businesses from engaging in an unchecked race to the bottom. Our collective economic security is not well-served when businesses treat their workers like indentured servants.

As the late Paul Wellstone once said, We all do better when we all do better.

While markets are efficient and useful in many respects, they do not guarantee that people will be fed, clothed, or sheltered. The market doesn’t care about the well-being of a starving, homeless worker who can’t find a job, the aspiring student who can’t afford a college education, the family that cannot pay its bills while also taking care of sick relatives. But we as a society ought to care. And that is why government regulation of markets is essential.

Left to their own devices, markets can fall apart or fail… catastrophically. That’s because markets are human inventions – they can only self-regulate to a certain extent. Markets are fairer and more stable when they are properly regulated and policed by government.

Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” He could have said the same thing about mixed-market economies.

We need only look at history to see why safeguards like the minimum wage are necessary. We at NPI are proud that Washington has the highest minimum wage in the United States, and we look forward to seeing working men and women who make minimum wage get a raise beginning on January 1st, 2012.

This entry was written by Andrew and posted on September 30th, 2011 at 4:09 PM. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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The Washington Restaurant Association may not like the idea that their members do not have the legal right to pay slave wages, but the truth is, even the minimum wage is not a living wage. You can’t raise a family on a minimum wage job or even two minimum wage jobs.

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Our city thrives because we have welcomed and embraced diversity. And RFRA threatens what thousands of people have spent decades building. Discrimination is wrong. And I hope that message is being heard loud and clear at our Statehouse.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And so yes or no, if a florist in Indiana refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?

MIKE PENCE: George, this is -- this is where this debate has gone, with -- with misinformation and frankly...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It's just a question, sir. Yes or no?

MIKE PENCE: Well -- well, this -- there's been shameless rhetoric about my state and about this law and about its intention all over the Internet. People are trying to make it about one particular issue. And now you're doing that, as well. The issue here -- The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has been on the books for more than 20 years. It does not apply, George, to disputes between individuals unless government action is involved. And in point of fact, in more than two decades, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has never been used to undermine anti-discrimination laws in this country.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Sir, I'm...

(CROSSTALK)

MIKE PENCE: Look, the...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: -- I'm just bringing up a...

MIKE PENCE: -- the question...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: -- (INAUDIBLE) from one of your supporters.

MIKE PENCE: -- I think the real question here...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: That was one of our supporters who was talking about the bill right there. It said it would protect a Christian florist who -- against any kind of punishment. Is that true or not?

Several major Wall Street banks are openly threatening to withhold campaign contributions from the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (SDCC) and individual Democratic senators, hoping to stop senators from talking about breaking them up. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, their chief critic, is having none of it. She says she will not be intimidated and has no intention of letting the banks off the hook.

The measure codifies hatred under the smoke screen of freedom and jeopardizes all that has been recently accomplished,… It legalizes discrimination against LGBT individuals and will cause significant harm to many people.

Big congratulations are in order to tonight Gonzaga University’s men’s basketball team, which defeated UCLA 74-62 to reach the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament for just the second time in school history.

The Zags will take on the winner of the Utah-Duke game on Sunday for the chance to earn a Final Four berth, something the team has never done before.

If Gonzaga wins just two more games, it will be playing for the national championship on Monday, April 6th. That would be a pretty big deal.

Gonzaga has only lost two games this season. Its 2015 squad is considered among the best in school history and certainly has a decent shot at making the Final Four.

Top-seeded Duke, which is predicted to win over Utah, would be a tough opponent, but hardly an unbeatable one.

In defeating UCLA, the Zags avenged a painful loss inflicted by the Bruins in 2006, which cost the team an Elite Eight berth that year.

Other Elite Eight matchups include Wisconsin vs. Arizona and Kentucky vs. Notre Dame. Louisville will be taking on either Oklahoma or Michigan State.

However, ESPN’s Jay Williams, himself a Duke alum, has Gonzaga as one of his picks all the way through to the Final Four. He predicts a Top Two matchup between Arizona and Gonzaga, with Arizona winning. Williams’ bracket is outperforming Obama’s, Nadella’s, and the Bing Official bracket by a substantial margin.